Cricket epidemic? CA only?

Has anyone else experienced a cricket shortage in your area in the last 1-2 weeks? A local pet shop here in CA, was informed by their supplier that there is some kind of cricket shortage, something is wiping out the crickets. Said pet shop was able to get some 3 and 4 week old crickets last Saturday 6/5 from his source, and was able to acquire some 5 week old crickets from another pet shop that doesn't sell as many.

Another reptile hobbist I know, also in California, was unable to get any crickets at the usual locations she goes to in the Bay Area. One shop even told her that if she did find any crickets, that she shouldn't feed them to her animals as lizards and animals are dieing left and right after eating the crickets available now. This to me sounds like someone is mis-informed and is mis-construing the deaths of perhaps a couple poorly cared for reptiles.

I have fed numerous crickets from Saturday's acquisitions, and all of the dwarf geckos I have are still thriving.

I've tried finding news info on google and bing, but no info. Anyone know anything about what's going on? Verifiable info is a plus! Thanks!

I have heard about a cricket virus..here is what Ghann's had to say HERE

Thank you for that link, that explains things a bit.

It sems like my local herp shop has a major shortage of crickets too.

I'm paranoid my small colony may have it.. I haven't brought any new crickets in but I've had some unusually high die off rates. Usually nothing dies, but I've been have 2-5 dead bodies on young/juvie crickets a day :(

Hopefully it is just due to the set up change.....

Yup same here on the east coast the people I deal with for rats said that they were really having trouble with crickets and were bringing in other feeder insects to take up the slack.

not here in el paso, i dont have anything that eats crickets but i was just in my local guys store and he has tons of crickets. i havent heard of this before but i will ask him. he's always up to date on the latest things in the reptile/exotic pet area

ive heard of the cricket virus, its wiping out entire colonies. :( i read a flyer on it at the last reptile show i was at. Its not looking good.

My latest email from pangea reptile mentioned it.

That's gotta suck.

I know someone who's cousin or brother or something runs Tophat Crickets (haha, how's that for he-said-she-said?), and she mentioned a few days ago that he had a huge problem that wiped out all of their crickets. I'm pretty sure Tophat is in Michigan? Haha. That's all I know. :P

I ordered crickets and was told I could only get a small size due to the virus. I was told its worm virus that was transferred to the crickets when breeders had their worms and crickets in the same area. I'm not positive tho. This is what was on the web page.

Well, looks like my colony has it. I had upwards of 60-80 I'm down to less than 20, looks mostly male so at this point I don't really have a viable group anymore. I've had consistent die offs, particularily in almost adult stages. There are 3 dead today with 2 more that are super lethargic and dragging their back legs.

The back leg dragging has been a consistent thing with the dying crickets.
:/ I guess I'm gonna go feed off the rest since by the time they reach adulthood they'll almost all be dead.

So whats everybody doing about their crickets?

Are there still facilities that arent infected?

Id hate to think people couldn't get their crickets anymore

From what i've heard most but Gann's has the virus and it's going to be hard to obtain crickets for the time being. I would suggest swapping over to superworms, mealworms, or pheonix worms (depending on your reptile's pallette that is).

Well, here is what I have done.. Today I just received my starter colony of Dubia's. Roach food, dry water crystals, egg flats. They are set up in a large tub in the snake room which stays around 80* at all times. They sent me 75 young Dubia's and 2 pairs of adults. So it wont be long before I will be over run with plenty of constant Dragon food. Tarantula food for my sister and food for my scorpions :)

That is what I have done. I said the heck with crickets. I just had to order a thousand pre wing crickets because everyone else was out of large. These horrible things never NEVER stop chirping! They are driving me nuts. So I figured if I cant order my large silent crickets without worrying about them being sick then I'm moving on up in the bug world and cultivating my own :gj:

Wow..not good. I am glad that I no longer feed any of my bug eaters crickets. In fact, I have not used crickets as a food source for a few years now due to losing animals that had eaten crickets when an issue like this happened before. I have been raising superworms for a bit, and have many different sizes for my bug eaters, and they do wonderfully on them. In fact, I am over run with superworms to the point I have taken to feeding off bunches of them to the wild bird population on my property since I really have no other way to get rid of the extras I dont need/use. Although, recently, my hubby told me I should put a listing on CL and try to sell them locally in Arizona to others.

Well, I don't feed anything crickets anymore, but the stores around me have been very low on their crickets. A friend of mine had fire belly toads, and after she fed them crickets, they died shortly after... I wonder if it was because of the crickets. I was totally unaware of this problem, I guess I should be happy about not feeding crickets anymore, huh?

i don't deal with crickets anyway, i started a dubia colony back in january and its taken off.

I haven't heard anything about the cricket virus being transferable to other species though. I'll ask around at the next reptile show i go to.

Last week there was an article in the paper about a very large cricket farm here in Florida that had millions wipped out due to the virus. They were now declaring bankruptcy.

The Ghan's link shares that the cricket virus epidemic is strictly affecting crickets, not the animals that eat them. Kinda like if I had chicken pox, and a bear ate me for dinner, it wouldn't get chicken pox just because it ate my arm that was loaded with the itchy rash. :)

I just sold my dwarf geckos and now only have rodent eating snakes. A little bit of relief is found with downsizing, even though I didn't experience any real troubles with acquiring crickets.

i just bought 5 dozen for my Tokay's last week-end and they had just got 10 or 11 boxes of crickets in that morning

a few years ago i used to breed my own crickets and found i always had some dieing off so i started getting the wild black crickets and putting them in with the others after about 6 months there was tons of crossed crickets and i quit loosing any others then what i used to feed. wild crickets get immunities cause they aint sheltered indoors.outdoors where natural selection lets only the most healthy survive

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Originally Posted by ice#1

i just bought 5 dozen for my Tokay's last week-end and they had just got 10 or 11 boxes of crickets in that morning

a few years ago i used to breed my own crickets and found i always had some dieing off so i started getting the wild black crickets and putting them in with the others after about 6 months there was tons of crossed crickets and i quit loosing any others then what i used to feed. wild crickets get immunities cause they aint sheltered indoors.outdoors where natural selection lets only the most healthy survive

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I hope you weren't feeding your animals wild crickets...
They're often full of parasites and can have poisons and chemicals on them from fertilizers, weed killers, and pest poisons.